Confronting the Barriers
By Mowahid Hussain Shah

Pakistan’s progress has been hampered by placement of personnel in chairs of authority, who are fully capable of flaunting perks and privileges but are fundamentally incapable to lead. It is a barrier that has not been confronted honestly. Moral and intellectual deficiencies are not prone to be overcome by grooming or tutoring, or learning on the job. Recent precedent suggests that, saddled with power, these shortcomings instead can exponentially metastasize.
There are ‘leaders’ galore in Pakistan. But can they lead? Can they inspire? Can they instill unity of purpose or belonging? Can they motivate? Can they endure inconvenience and sacrifice? Can they live simply and humbly? Can they shun the association and influence of those investors with deep pockets? Can they on their own free will commit themselves to act for the larger good? Ample evidence suggests that political power is mostly “all about me.”
Bypassing the aforementioned means avoiding the necessary process of national self-scrutiny. Despite much-touted claims to the contrary, high quality formal education has not proven to be a panacea for social ills, if the mindset remains defeatist, grasping, and intellectually colonized.
The problem is not specific to Pakistan alone. Examine Trump’s unilateral concession to Israel on his Jerusalem move. A major casualty of that hugely escalatory step in the world’s toughest neighborhood is isolating America, reducing its global stature plus posing a potentially catastrophic threat to US vital interests. But has anybody in the 538-strong US Congress, including 438 members of the House of Representatives and 100 Senators representing 50 states, stood up? And this, too, in a land where freedom of expression is constitutionally enshrined through the First Amendment and fully protected by courts of law.
During a recent visit to Chicago, I stumbled on an opinion piece in the December 15 issue of the Chicago Sun-Times, written by an Israeli diplomat, encaptioned “Trump’s Jerusalem plan brings us closer to peace.”
Thomas Jefferson, the third US President and the principal drafter of the Declaration of Independence, had identified two winning attributes for leaving an enduring impact: “An honest heart being the first blessing, a knowing head is the second.” The Chicago article had neither. Deceit and hypocrisy are a part of politics. But they have a short shelf-life.
Western media routinely depicts women in Pakistan living in a hostile misogynist environment. But anomalies abound elsewhere, even in the most liberal gender-equality cultures. For example, the Nordic island nation of Iceland (which I visited two summers ago) is led by a female prime minster, KatrinJakobsdottir, and has a strong gender-equality record. Yet, according to statistics agency Eurostat, it has “one of Europe’s highest per capita levels of reported rapes.” An Associated Press story citing a 2010 University of Iceland study, found that “30 percent of Icelandic women aged 18 to 30 reported having been physically attacked by a man, including rape or attempted rape.”
The incapacity to lead is a transnational dilemma, more so in this fraught, polarized era. But for Pakistan, the problem is much more acute with little margin of error. The nation can ill afford repetition of self-imposed mishaps.